Column: Let's go junking; memories of growing up in Fond du Lac

5:57 PM,
Dec. 13, 2013

Written by

Thomas Ramirez
Special to Action Reporter Media

In 1917, when my dad, Joseph, was 16, his father sent him to the United States to avoid conscription into Pancho Villa's rag-tag army (the Mexican Revolution raging) andinevitable death.

Daddy crossed a footbridge at El Paso, paid a guard 50 cents, and entered America. He worked on railroads, in coal mines, harvesting sugar beets, eventually ending up in Fond du Lac, where he spent most of his working years as a common laborer at Fred Rueping Leather.

Mostly unlettered, he had difficulty with English. The Great Depression in full sway, his eternal mantra to me and my brothers was, "Go work. Make ...